note:By far the quickest & easiest way to make & stitch screenshots in one operation is the free imagegrabber2 - http://www45.brinkster.com/antworkz/ install & use that & you'll not need to worry about reading the rest of the info below unless you have an unsupported clip, it does support most.

Windows Media Player 9

If you are using Windows Media Player 9, pause the video at the scene you wish to capture.
Press Ctrl+i (that's control key plus letter 'i'). Think of the 'i' as "image."
The "Save Captured Image" dialogue will open up. Choose the folder you wish to save the image in -- choose the file type (either JPG or BMP) and give it a file name (default name is "capture.") Click on "Save."
If you plan on doing any further manipulation of the saved image it's best to save it as a BMP to retain the original quality. You can use Paint (or other app) to save it as a JPG later

You can't take a screenshot if the program is using overlays to display the picture.
In windows media player you can disable overlays and screenshots will work, I recommend you re-enable them afterwards.
Tools>Options>Performance Tab>Advanced -- uncheck "use overlays" if it is checked. If that doesn't work, turn video acceleration all the way down.

Windows Media Player 10

Guess what? It's exactly the same procedure as WMP 9.

Media Player Classic

This is NOT a Microsoft product -- it's open-source (free) and works very well even though it looks like the old MS Windows Media Player 6.4. It's easy enough for beginners yet has options and features for the more advanced user. Get MPC from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
On that page you will find it under the "Latest File Releases" with a "Download" link.
1. When you load the video in MPC pause it and go to [File], [Save Thumbnails].
2. A dialog should popup In the dropdown box where it says file name, choose whatever you want or use the default name
3. Set the file type to .jpg - .bmp images will not upload here
4. For the thumbnails options select however many rows and colums you want for the screenshots. The product of the columns and rows will tell you how many screenshots will be taken i.e. 4 rows x 4 columns = 16 screenshots
5. For image width, though the PreUpload page states 800 px should be the maximum width but you can go as high as 1024 px without causing too much trouble for users here
6. Referring to 4 and 5 - you should bear in mind the wider the image you make and (to a lesser extent) the more rows/colums you make, the larger the file size will be and remember you can't adjust quality. It's best to do no more than 8 rows by 8 columns for 800 px wide pictures and 6 rows by 6 columns for 1024 px wide pictures to keep under 256 KB . If you plan to use a different imagehost you can make the image wider and have more rows and columns.
7. Click [Save]
8. Depending on the length of the clip and your processor speed, it will take between a few seconds and 5 minutes to scan the video and produce the screenshots
NOTE 1 - you can't manually pick the frames you want, the only option is to adjust the number of rows OR columns to alter the number of images it shows and as a result your shots will differ
NOTE 2 - you get the "GetCurrentImage hr=8000ffff" error, you need to change the Playback Output. Go to [View], [Options], [Playback], [Output]. If the file type is .avi, .mpg or .wmv change the DirectShow Video button to "VMR7 (windowed)" or "VMR9 (windowed)". If the file type is .rm or .mov use the "DirectX 9" option. Now click [Apply] and screenshots now work.

BSPlayer

BSplayer is a free Windows player that plays back all kinds of media files
(avi /mpg /asf /wmv /wav /mp3 /ogm ) and specialises in video and divx playback.
Get it here: http://www.bsplayer.org/
By pressing Shift + P, BSplayer captures at the resolution you see the movie (what you see is what you get).
The button P captures at the movie's original resolution according to their Web site -- but I don't see the difference myself although I've only used it
infrequently. Whichever you choose, the image is saved in the same directory BSPlayer resides in and uses the filename format of 'bscap000.jpg' with each successive capture increasing the number by 1.

VLC Media Player

[Ctrl+S] to bring up your preferences, click [Video] and under "Snapshot", choose a folder to save screenshots and save them as .jpg format. Now click [Save] then [OK]. Now when you play the video in VLC, just click [Video] in the menu then [Snapshot] and the screenshots will be saved in your snapshot folder and voila!

PowerDVD
Click the camera icon.

ATI Media Player
If you have an ATI video card, you might have this.
Same as PowerDVD -- Just click the camera icon.

Other Screen Capture Utilities

IrfanView
Free for non-commercial use only.
Available at: http://www.irfanview.com/
Does a lot of stuff -- kind of like a Swiss Army Knife.

You do not need to install Image Joiner, simply save the imagejoiner.exe file to the location of your choice. To run it simply double click the .exe file & follow these steps

"General" tab -

If you have Nero Showtime &/or BSplayer installed you will see option/s to - "Use (your player) capture folder". If selected this will become the default location to search for images & to save images.

"Add this to every image" - allows you to add text to each individual capture within your joined image, either the file name (very useful for compilation uploads), or your own custom text.

"Use this font" - contains all font options, type, size, color etc.

"Use this color as background" - is the background of your joined image.

"Sizing" tab -

The sizing options are very self-explanatory & are applied to each individual capture, the only thing to watch out for is distortion of image when changing sizes. For best results your size settings should have the same width x height ratio as the original captures.

Then just "Do It" :-)

--------------------------------------------------
Capture instructions for free version of BSplayer

To set a custom capture folder & adjust other capture settings open "Preferences" in BSplayer & highlight "General".

Lower right of this pane you can set the folder, image types & name. As the captures you are taking will be processed further with image joiner it is recommended you use the better quality .bmp file type.

If you don't have Nero Showtime you can download BSplayer, install it, do you captures, join them , all in far less time than it would take you to do just the captures alone with Windows media player ....... & you'll end up with a much, much better media player.

The Following 153 Users Say Thank You to dj_poms For This Useful Post:

5. When Media Player Classics opens the video click File, then Save Thumbnails.

6. Select the folder where you want to save the screencaps, enter a file name that you like, adjust the number of Thumbnails and Image width options to suit, select format for thumbnail image - .jpg or .bmp, and then click Save. Media Player Classic will then generate the thumbnails and save them as an image in the folder you specified.

4. In the Select Image Content drop down list select whether the file is Safe for Work or Not Safe For Work.

5. Click Send Files and then wait for a minute or so. When the screen changes it will indicate the image has been saved to the Imagevenue server and will provide a list of links towards the bottom of the page.

6. Copy one of the links and paste it into the thread that you will be posting at Planetsuzy.

Complete and submit your thread and click on Submit. You should have a post with a link to the thumnail image.

WinRAR - Files ending with .rar must first be unzipped using WinRAR: http://codecpack.nl/winrar.htm
If the file ends with .rar.part1, .rar.part2, etc., all parts must be downloaded to same folder before unzipping.

Clever or informative comments are o.k., but we discourage replys such as: "Thanks," "Great rack," "I would do her," etc. Please express gratitude for posts by clicking one or both of the following icons:

conveys ten reputation points and registers as thanks given;conveys reputation points (positive or negative), allows for a private comment, but does not register as thanks given or received.

You can use the VLC player for 99% of all media types without the need to find and install codecs, it even plays damaged movies. You can drag and drop a movie on the screen of VLC player to make it play.

Used imagehost: ImageVenue (free, reliable long term hosting of the images)Allowed image types: .jpeg/.jpg (not .bmp, .gif, ...)Maximum filesize allowed of a image: 3 MBMaximum number of images you can upload per session: 10

Preparation:
Place the pictures you want to upload in a folder of their own.

Uploading:
Go to: http://imagevenue.com/ (add it to your internet Favorites if you want to use it again later).

1. click on the "Go" button on the ImageVenue site (see screen below (1.)), this will refresh the page giving you 10 uploadslots instead of the standard 5.

2. click on the 'Browse...' button (see screen below (2.)), browse to the folder with the image(s) to upload and doubleclick on the image you want to assign to that slot. Repeat this step with the following uploadslots. Note: always fill them from top to buttom and if you post a serie or scanned magazine upload them; first image/page, second image/page, etc... to keep the sequence correct.

3. when done filling the uploadslots you will have to select the image content, if the images contain nudity select 'not safe for work' from the dropdown menu (see screen below (3.)).

4. press the 'Send file(s)' button to start uploading (see screen below (4.)), this will take a couple of minutes depending on the number of images, the filesize and your uploadspeed.

5. when the uploading is done the page will refresh and show the thumbnail images. When you upload 1 or 2 images they will be shown single (see left screen below) (when you uploaded 2 scroll down to see the second one) and when you uploaded 3 or more they will be shown as a group (see right screen below). Look for the textbox below the line "Hotlink a clickable thumbnail on a Forum or Message Board Use the second link if this one fails" and click on the 'Copy Url' link above it to select the link(s) (see screens below (5.)), then click with the right mouse-button on the selected link(s) in the textbox and click on the option 'Copy' in the menu that pops up (see screens below (6.)) (Ctrl+C) (Note that javascript needs to be enabled to use the 'Copy Url' link when javascript is disabled in your browser then manualy select the links).

6. to add the thumbnail image(s) to a reply or thread you have to click with the right mouse-button in the text field and click on the option 'Paste' in the menu that pops up (see left screen below (7.)) (Ctrl+V). You can also paste the links to a .txt/.doc/... file in the same way.

7. finaly you can use the 'Preview Post' button (see left screen below (8.)) to check if everything looks OK before submitting the reply or thread.

as it is only possible to upload 10 images per session it is a option to save the links to a .txt/.doc/... file as described in step 6. and upload all images before posting them.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Usefull option on ImageVenue is that there is on the left bottom corner of every opened imagepage this section:

get link code for this image.
image hosted by imagevenue.com

with the "get link code" link you can get the link code of the image again.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Note: sometimes it happens that the image wasn't pasted correct and looks like:

This can easily be fixed by typing and putting the missing bracket in front of it yourself: "[URL=htt ..." When a bigger part is missing the principle works the same, just add what is missing by typing it.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Tip: if you prefer you can create a small space between the images you post by typing one blank space between ".../IMG][/URL]blank space[URL=htt...".
Only use one space btw otherwise you will end up with these: * between the images.

Success, Dub.

<

The Following 120 Users Say Thank You to DubSalute For This Useful Post: